“They submitted an initial report of their findings"
The Nottingham food wholesaler formerly called Asiana has entered liquidation, with creditors missing out on millions of pounds owed to them.
The firm, which changed its name to Beijing Songyou in 2022, went into liquidation in 2023 after appointing Mercian Advisory to wind the company up.
Asiana was acquired in a multimillion-pound management buy-out led by Surat Singh Sangha in 2003 with plans to push into the retail market.
Based in Nottingham, Sangha resigned as company director in January 2020.
In 2015, Surat Singh Sangha was awarded an OBE for services to entrepreneurship.
Also known as Sam, Sangha has had a large number of dissolved companies under his name. This includes Evolution Drinks and Howzin Developments.
A statement of affairs published in August 2023 showed that Beijing Songyou collapsed, owing just under £4 million to creditors, which many of them are unlikely to see again.
Many of these creditors were based overseas.
For example, a Malaysian company called FOCOB Food Industries was owed £185,000, while a firm called XIAMEN C&D was owed £255,974.
Meanwhile, HMRC was owed just over £1 million, while NatWest was owed £458,266.
But Octavian Facilities Management and Octavian IT were owed over £214,000 between them.
A liquidators report issued earlier in 2024 highlighted that Mercian Advisory identified a “number of areas of concern” after carrying out investigations into Beijing Songyou’s accounts.
Grace & Good specialises in this kind of work and was instructed to carry out the investigation.
The report added:
“[Grace & Good] made a significant amount of enquiries with the company director as well as the company accountants, bankers and other stakeholders in relation to payments from the company bank account as well as the movements in relation to the assets owned by the company in the period between the last set of accounts and the commencement of the liquidation.
“They submitted an initial report of their findings, and it was determined that a meeting should be held with the company director in order to obtain answers to certain areas of concern.
“The meeting was held, and the director provided answers to the queries with a promise to provide evidence in support of their position.
“We have yet to receive the promised evidence and are currently reviewing the position to determine whether further action is likely to result in returns being generated for the benefit of the estate.”
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